The increasingly public feud between Russian military leaders and the head of a Russian paramilitary group escalated dramatically on Friday, when Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the paramilitary Wagner Group, accused Russian armed forces of attacking his soldiers and vowed retaliation. It was a shocking accusation, one with unpredictable consequences for Prigozhin, Russia, and the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The evil that the military leadership of the country brings forward must be stopped. They have forgotten the word ‘justice,’ and we will return it,” Prigozhin said in a recording published Friday on Wagner’s social media, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Russian Ministry of Defense denied Prigozhin’s allegations that the military had launched a strike on Wagner fighters, calling it a “provocation.” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said late Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “aware” of Prigozhin’s claims, and that the Kremlin was taking “all necessary measures.”

Shortly after, Russian law enforcement said that in response to Prigozhin’s statements, Russia’s security services, the FSB, have launched a criminal case over calls for an armed uprising. “We demand to stop these unlawful actions at once.”

Russia’s deputy head of military intelligence went as far as to call it a “coup” attempt in a video urging Wagner fighters to stand down. Russia’s prosecutor general also announced that Prigozhin was now being investigated “on suspicion of organizing an armed rebellion,” reports the New York Times. Prigozhin himself, for what it’s worth, denied he was carrying out a coup, calling it a “march of justice.”

Videos and images posted to social media late Friday showed Russian security forces patrolling the streets of Moscow and another Russian city, reportedly close to where Wagner troops are deployed in Ukraine.

Prigozhin, whose Wagner forces helped take the city of Bakhmut, has been increasingly vocal in his attacks against the Russian military’s leaders, posting more and more scathing criticism of the top brass over the war effort and accusing generals of denying Wagner the ammunition and support needed to fight effectively.

Prigozhin has generally avoided direct criticism of Putin himself, but earlier on Friday he had posted a video on Telegram with a stunning assessment of Russia’s war effort. In it, he attacked the Russian military’s — and, by extension, Putin’s — rationale for the war, basically saying the threat of NATO aggression through Ukraine was made up by Russia’s top brass and corrupt elites. The war, Prigozhin said, was “needed for a bunch of scumbags to triumph and show how strong of an army they are.” He included a diatribe against Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who Prigozhin claimed pushed for war to secure a promotion, and whose decisions led to the deaths of thousands of Russian soldiers.

Prigozhin has taken a very public — and very risky — part in the war in Ukraine, and he may have finally crossed a line that he has been butting up against for many weeks. Yet this story is very much still developing, and both the Russian government and Prigozhin have an interest in pushing their own propaganda at this moment.

Prigozhin is a Putin ally and a political survivor, but those often have limits in Putin’s Russia. Still, whatever is unfolding is yet another crack in Russia’s war machine, and a window into some of the dysfunction of the Russian state — dysfunction, in part, of Putin’s own making. Who is this Prigozhin character, and what does he want?

Prigozhin, the man at the center of this, is an unlikely, and imperfect, challenger of Russia’s war effort.

Known as “Putin’s chef,” he has been something of a fixer for Putin’s regime. He isn’t exactly in Putin’s inner circle but has the skills and connections to make himself useful and needed. This may be setting up a troll farm to sow political discord abroad, including in the 2016 US elections, or acting as the frontman for Wagner, a private mercenary-like force to do the Kremlin’s bidding. In both cases, Prigozhin fulfilled the interests of the Russian state, but with just enough distance to offer Putin a measure of plausible deniability.

Prigozhin has claimed to be the founder of the Wagner Group, but the reality is likely much more complicated. He is more likely the convenient figurehead of the group, which Russia has relied on for years to do its bidding around the world in places where it did not want to openly commit troops or resources, and where it could operate in a kind of gray zone. That again granted Moscow a degree of plausible deniability as it exerted its influence and interests in other corners of the globe, from Syria to Mali to Venezuela. It also gave Putin a kind of independent power center, a paramilitary outside of the formal military structures.

That all started changing in Ukraine, where Wagner, and Prigozhin himself, took on an increasingly public role in the war.

Wagner filled a specific operational and public relations need for Russia. The group’s fighters — a portion of them convicts recruited from Russian prisons — bogged down and attrited Ukrainian forces at a time Russia’s military was in disarray. The group achieved its most substantial victory in Bakhmut, one of Russia’s main territorial gains since last summer. But that victory took months, and came at an astounding casualty rate.

But as the battle for Bakhmut ground on, Prigozhin got more and more outspoken about what he saw as the failures of the Russian military and its leaders. In one video Prigozhin posted in May, he stands in a field, apparently surrounded by corpses of dead Wagner fighters. “Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where are the fucking shells!” Prigozhin says, referring to the minister of defense and the military’s chief of the general staff. “They came here as volunteers and died so you could gorge yourselves in your offices.”

These kinds of critiques are frankly shocking for a guy who is largely dependent on Putin’s largesse; in a country where open criticism of the government, and especially the war, is often brutally crushed; and within a military apparatus where insubordination of this magnitude is rarely tolerated.

Some have interpreted Prigozhin’s braggadocio as an oligarch feeling himself, and seizing on the incompetence of the Russian military to create his own power center — maybe even playing the long game to challenge Putin.

But even before Prigozhin escalated his rivalry with the Russian military this week, experts I’ve spoken to really doubted Prigozhin was actually a Putin rival and could build his own power center in the Russian state. Instead, then, it made sense to look as Prigozhin as a functionary who was seizing an opportunity in an otherwise dicey environment.

There is a place — even within Russia’s controlled media environment — for a convenient foil, a guy to get out front and complain about Russian military incompetence. It focuses and puts pressure on the war’s generals, but not on the war’s mission or its necessity. It is not necessarily a permanent or stable spot to be in, and becomes even more precarious when Prigozhin outruns his usefulness.

Experts told me this spring that the worst thing for Prigozhin is for the Ukraine war to end. “Prigozhin clearly understands that there will be no safe retirement for him,” Sergey Sukhankin, a senior research fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, told Vox earlier this year. “He knows that if the current regime, or if his Wagner Group, goes down, he goes down with them.”

There were signs then, as now, that Prigozhin might overstep his ambitions. How that will play out for him — and for Russia right now — is extremely unclear, although the view from where Prigozhin sits looks pretty bleak. If the Russian military is launching attacks against him and his fighters, and if the security services are really investigating him, then any serious challenge to the Russian state or military looks pretty doomed right about now. But the fact that Russia had to rely on Wagner, and Prigozhin, to wage its war helps explain why Russia has struggled militarily since invading Ukraine, and that is unlikely to change, no matter what’s next for Prigozhin.

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  • Antik@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    From what I gather, some of Wagner forces’ bases were recently bombed, killing lots of orcs, and Prigozhin is blaming/accusing Putin.

    This isn’t the first thing though, I remember Prigozhin complaining about how Russia wasn’t sending them enough supplies or whatever not long ago.

      • Antik@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Interesting, is that clear by something he’s said? I’d love to see it so I can be more informed.

    • Soviet Snake@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      I know being a Gringo it’s hard to not be racist, but please abstain from using racial slurs, it’s disgusting.

      Other commentators saw in Tolkien’s orcs a reflection of wartime propaganda caricatures of the Japanese. Critics have noted, too, that the work embodies a moral geography, with good in the West, evil in the East.

      • tookmyname@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Comparing brutal invaders to storybook villains isn’t racist. Unless someone is talking about civilians and not just military forces I don’t see how it’s racist.

        • pingveno@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          It’s dehumanizing, no matter what they’ve done wrong. It keeps a clear mind to use precise language. They are Wagner mercenaries.

          • tookmyname@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Dehumanizing sure. Still not racist. I don’t use the term myself. Maybe I would if I was being invaded by rapists and torturous scumbags. Just don’t agree with the sentiment that’s it’s automatically racist.

            • pingveno@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              I would agree that it’s not necessarily racist. Like, no one I’ve seen is talking about Russian civilians as “orcs”, just soldiers. Nor are people who are fighting on Russia’s side but aren’t ethnically Russian excluded. It’s problematic purely because of where dehumanization can lead. That’s especially true because Ukraine will have to rebuild at some point, so any lasting resentment towards ethnic Russians would be incredibly problematic.

              • tookmyname@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                I agree. And I don’t use the term. But I’d imagine if they were lobbing missiles at my apartment building for years, I’d see why there’s a resemblance to an unrelenting brutal force that represents pure evil in a fantasy book. And ya I’d be less worried about the concerns you raise. I’d prefer people on the internet, commenting from the safety of their new iPads, not use the term. It’s a bad look, and it definitely can have negative affect sun the future. The language we use matters. But I’d never fault a Ukrainian fighting for their lives, and suffering, for doing so.

            • Soviet Snake@lemmygrad.ml
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              1 year ago

              Do you know dehumanizing the other is the first step to justify discrimination? It doesn’t matter what the other people are doing, you judge by their actions, you do not resort to insulting their features.

              • toomanyjoints69@lemmygrad.ml
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                1 year ago

                I told someone at work that my grandpa was Russian and he stopped talking to me. He immediatley started ranting about what I was doing to Ukraine. Before this the conversation was about the Byzantine Empire & how it affected Ukraine’s history. It is interesting and I’m glad that unlike my grandpa I am not Russian. Lesson learned.

              • tookmyname@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                If someone breaks into my home, burns it down, kills my family, rapes my mother I’m gonna call them a piece of shit. A monster. Whatever. Don’t be a piece of shit, don’t get called one.

                Full disclosure: I don’t use the term, because I’m not a victim of this war. But I wouldn’t blame anyone who is.

              • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                Absolutely wild you got downvoted for this in the previous post. Shame on all you racist fuckers which do this. Lemmy is rapidly turning into reddit kind of racist filth.

                • Soviet Snake@lemmygrad.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  I can understand having political differences, but using this word is just plain xenophobic racism, it’s not necessary we agree with everything but could they at least pretend they are not fascists.

      • toasteecup@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Orcs aren’t exclusive to Tolkien literature. Even if he intended them to be as you say “a reflection of wartime propaganda caricatures of the Japanese”,that doesn’t mean every interpretation of Orcs are Tolkienian Orcs. It does however make it look like you’re attempting to be offended by something instead of finding something actually offensive to be outraged by.